I like to work on cars. Behold modern cars and all of their overcomplicated bullshit.
90% of problems on modern cars are computers miscommunicating with other computers, out just deciding that some sensor isn’t behaving well enough, so you have to throw the baby out with the bath water. All this in proprietary formats in proprietary subsystems a filthy mortal like you can’t afford the tools to even know what’s wrong.
And then you can get 3rd party tools like Autel, which also aren’t cheap. But this model of tool can only talk to these modules on this model of car. Any car that requires a scan tool to bleed the brakes can go straight to the crusher. Oh and let’s run all of the buses through the radio so you can never change that out without a dongle to try to keep things working.
How do I read the knock sensor info from OBD port for Subaru
A: It’s not part of the OBD standard, so you need a Cobb access port to read the data
Okay but I don’t have money for that and I’m literally just making a python script to do this.
A: Well you need the custom ID to query the sensor info
Okay what’s the custom ID?
A: You have to pay morbillion dollars to get access to the documentation that has the custom info that you can get from the ECU
Not even close to doing anything with tuning ot modding, but you’re telling me I can’t even read a sensor because neither Subuaru nor Cobb will tell me a single hex ID bruh
I really hope that right to repair at least makes the hex IDs available
I just wish I could but a fucking service manual. Seems like like the only way is to get access to a digital copy through a subscription service. I don’t need service manuals for every car made, just mine.
I’ve kind of used it, but I’ve found a lot of service manuals for my cars on enthusiast forums.
I managed to find a PDF for my vehicle. But I would much rather have a physical book.
Oh believe me, I know. I’ve printed out hundreds of pages to put in a binder when I did my transaxle rebuild.
My trick is buying the paper with the 3 holes already punched. But almost any print shop should be able to print and bind it for you as well.
I have started a binder myself. The idea for the paper is real good. Thanks.
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I love board games, and own a game shop. Many companies are creating board games (and other types of games) that require their app, then after a few years they abandon the app making the game useless and unplayable.
I remember having an old boardgame with a VHS. It has a countdown and would interrupt you every so often with events or punishments.
It was fun, but after the first time you play it you’d know every “surprise” coming on the tape.
Similar situation - those board games are honestly pretty rare and almost universally shit, app or no. Plus, they’ve been trying to do that for years. I had a clue board game that would text you clues throughout the game. I played that on my first flip phone. It was absolutely horrendous
This is why I don’t buy toys and other items that require a specific app.
The last one I remember buying was that little robot and the company that made it went under and a new company bought them and resurrected the robot but now required a monthly subscription.
Great example of why this kind of crap needs to stop already. I don’t need a damn app for everything I do and it doesn’t have to be specialized.
The other side of it is those things I have, like an older RC helicopter, that still has the app available on the App Store but not for modern devices because the specifications changed and the app no longer is compatible for modern devices.
Fun stuff…
I play darts, we used to write on whiteboards with sharpies. Now nearly every club has a computer with some kind of software. Usually this software is closed source and sends all the data to some kind of server. We as players have no choice if we want to play the tournament, we have no control. Many clubs also use the computer for training. So everyone can see when you are playing, where you are playing and how you are playing. Great to see how good your next opponent is. Also great to track people. But way worse is the fact that everyone just talks about their average. Oh I played so bad my average was under 60, I still won 3-0 but I was so bad. I hate this. I want back the times where I play shit, win the game with a nice finish and can proudly say it wasn’t good but a nice finish and we stop talking, not hear from someone not even in the room how bad I played.
Kinda a niche topic to rant about I know, but no one in this hobby seems to get my concerns.
I don’t play darts but it makes me genuinely sad to hear that.
I used to go out to bars with my friends and play darts in college and it was always fun to just play and even make up your own rules sometimes! That makes me kind of sad that something as simple as throwing pointy sticks at a board had to be computerized… I could see the benefit if you were playing in a pro tournament or something, but just trying to enjoy a game of darts with your buddies definitely doesn’t need all of that
I wonder if bowlers felt like that about electronic scoring?
Well I play video games, and woo boy, let me tell you about microtransactions, crap DLC content, season passes, never ending early access, unfinished releases, and anti cheat root-kits! If you’re on console you pay a premium to play online, if you’re on PC you have 18 different game launchers and DRM bullshit. Digital only stuff means you don’t own your games, cant loan them or trade them or sell them. I’m sure there’s more, and admittedly there’s good with the bad. Graphics have come a long way, and some rare innovations are fun to see. I still have fun with it, but wow it is a fucked up landscape full of way more land mines than it used to be.
When I was a kid me and my friends who lived on my street would always trade or borrow our NES and SNES cartridges
You can still do this with physical console games.
Steam also has the family sharing support where you can burrow games from people.
Not to mention every OG single player game now becoming heavily multiplayer focused.
Halo, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Rainbow Six, Grand Theft Auto…
Can’t just make a new IP. No…we need to ruin the old game you love playing and focus only on players who want an online exclusive experience.
I quit following Halo Infinite updates because it only ever was something new for multiplayer.
Rockstar canceled all DLC plans for GTA V and waited 10 years to unveil its successor. I’m not even interested in GTA VI because it’s inevitably going to be multiplayer focused and forget about the offline single player experience.
Rainbow Six Patriots got canceled so we could get Rainbow Six Siege which has pretty much become a CounterStrike knock off.
All these companies forgot what made their games great and who the original fanbase consisted of in favor of the flavor of the month players.
Board games have been nearly ruined by kickstarter.
Instead of buying a well reviewed and recommended game from a store, you have to back a hyped up sales pitch, and then wait 4 months for delivery, if the producers don’t just bail with your money or go “oops, we couldn’t finish what we promised, and we already spent all your money…”.
And if you don’t back it to later read the reviews, the game is out of print and still waiting for the first wave of deliveries, meaning a second print is still at least a year off.
Also, the ratings are heavily skewed by people rating on the hype or early/review copies, meaning the rankings are heavily amazonified.
EtA: Also games are heavily bloated with social media candy: heavy and fragile minis, box stands, blingy crap periferals (branded dice holding toucan) and still needing organisers, player aids and mods from third parties who’ve gotten review copies to make said supplements…
Oh, and the stretch goal extras (get another 150 vanity minis/3D printed scoring tokens) for only $150 and an 18 month wait!
It sounds like you’re describing the consequences of FOMO rather than the ruination of an industry.all of these issues can be circumvented by simply not participating.
What is this thread but people yelling at clouds?
If the game is actually good there will almost always be another Kickstarter later if it doesn’t go retail, but it could be years. Except for CMON games which are based on FOMO, those do not come back and retail can be significantly worse.
Bike lanes and paths are now full of people buzzing by at 25mph or more.
I would take that over the hunters on our hiking trail.
Honestly everyone going 25mph on an ebike is taking a motorcycle or car off the road. And im happy with that deal
Anyone going that fast on a bike IS a motorcycle.
I saw a Vespa today for the first time in ages, and kind of wondered why mopeds have fallen so out of favour. There used always be a few 16 year olds belting about on them.
But why would anyone get one when they can have an ebike? Vespa is likely more expensive, needs petrol, you need a licence, a (relatively) expensive helmet, you need costly insurance.
Compared to an e-bike that’s half the price, doesn’t need a licence or insurance, can be ridden with a normal cycling helmet, and is allowed use bike lanes. It’s a bit of a no brainer.
Yes agreed, although i prefer electric motorcycles to ICE. At least they dont wake me up at 3am, brrrpbrrrprrrrrrrrp
Solar, batteries and portable music has wrecked most of my favourite camping areas.
Bluetooth speakers are amazing and also the worlds worst technology in public at the same time.
… we’ve had boomboxes since the 70s yo…
But they were at least limited in their portability and loudness and battery life. Now you can have a tiny speaker that gives up any semblance of sound quality for loudness, but will also manage to last 8+ hours.
Some of those bad boys would pack 8 D batteries and you didn’t ever have to charge it, just crack open a new pack of batteries every few outings.
Hell you can GRILL with 8 D batteries.
I just got back from 3 nights out at a rustic cabin I use as a retreat when I need to get away. I took my portable record player and about 20 records. The record player has an internal rechargeable battery that I recharge with the solar generator I brought with me.
Where is the line where these things ruin a spot versus contributing to it?
Where is the line where these things ruin
Decibels.
Does the entire camping areas need to hear your music?
Ahhh, well, it is just me out there so no one else can hear my music, there isn’t another house for a mile in any direction… but this is not an issue with just camping. Jerks blasting their music from their boats as they go by on the lake is a problem but that has been going on since the invention of music. Spock had to Vulcan nerve pinch a dude on the bus across the Golden Gate Bridge in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home back in the 80s because someone was playing music too loud and wouldn’t turn it down.
Yeah, the variety of music got more accessible I suppose but group camp grounds have been filled with music for a long time now, it was something that bothered me back in the 80s when I was a kid. This isn’t really a new issue due to technology, I am sure plenty of bards have been killed throughout history for playing their music too loud in the woods, or in parks, or wherever. Everywhere music can be played it has been played too loud.
Group camp grounds have been full of music for probably as long as music and group camp grounds have existed
All opinion really. Some people like quiet, some people like music, some people hate genres of music. If someone went to relax and listen to the crickets/nature laying under the stars and all they hear is Luke Bryan, I imagine they may be saddened by it. I personally like socializing with others when camping so it wouldn’t bother me.
Wholeheartedly agreed. It was late and I misinterpreted the intent of the post, it is other people’s music that is the problem that OP was referring to, not the accessibility of music in general.
I have AirPods and headphones and love music. I have plenty of ways to stream it from the ether and into my head without others listening but I don’t like to do that in nature. I like records better for that because it has to be intentional and, from a functional perspective, I’d like to be able to hear a rattlesnake rattle before it bites me, or a bear or wild boars rustling in the trees/brush before it becomes an issue and they are right on me, with earbuds in or headphones on in nature can cause a safety issue. I like to be in the moment in nature and there are plenty of times where I do listen to the crickets or the lapping of the water with no music playing. I like feeling vibe of the moment, select the record and then have ~20mins of that music until it stops playing and I either switch records because the vibe has changed or I want to bring a different energy to the moment. It is more situational and tactile with records. Not having an endless stream of random music on a constant cycle is key for me to enjoying those moments in nature.
Like I said, I thought the OP was talking more about accessibility of music in nature in general, not the intrusion of other people’s music onto your life while one is in nature. It is a problem that is not specific to just campgrounds but I can see where it is a bigger problem in a campground than in normal daily life nowadays. With the advancement of technology in regards to streaming, wireless earbuds/headphones and personal technology I think music intrusion on a day to day basis is less intrusive now than it was 10 years ago or more. There are still people blasting music in their cars at midnight driving down city streets but there are less people playing boomboxes while walking down the street or while on the bus, subway or other public places because technology has advanced to a point where we can limit that intrusion on others and most reasonable people take advantage of that more now than they ever have before.
Video games. Streamers, YouTubers, and other ”content creators” have had a massive negative effect on the hobby as a whole.
The bandwagons driven by these people can destroyed games that should have had a mediocre reception, but instead were panned by a couple creators then that criticism was parroted loud and wide. Where a game could have had a nice little niche audience, instead it was shut down a year after launch due to the shitty bandwagons.
These people also drive companies to make horrible balancing and content decisions. Since these people play games as their jobs, and play them daily for 8-10-12+ hours, they have wildly different desires and perspectives on games. These perspectives again get parroted loudly, the game companies hear it, and make changes/decisions based on people that play all day every day. This destroys gaming for not only casual gamers, but all gamers that don’t play one game for 8+ hours a day every day.
I could go on and on, but these trash reality TV stars for nerds have done so much damage to the industry.
While it is not just video games this is happening with. I see it with board games, miniature games, and RPGs too.
I’m not even the least bit surprised.
I’m not sure how streamers and such are influencing developers negatively when most of them shit all over the bullshit game developers constantly do that actually makes games suck like lootboxes and live service garbage. Most devs don’t seem to listen to streamers even when they parrot what a majority of the players also say.
Could you give some examples for the non-casual decisions by companies?
From what I understand (I don’t play but my brother does) Starcraft 2 multiplayer was balanced almost entierly around the pro scene.
The industrial revolution resulted in climate change that makes it borderline impossible to be active outside in the summer.
The industrial revolution resulted in climate change that makes it borderline impossible to be active outside in the summer.
Eh, not yet. For me it’s much worse to be inside in a building without A/C, then being outside doing activities. You just need to be careful and do not expose yourself too much to the sun.
Somewhat tangential, but Eddy Burback recently posted a YouTube video talking about AI, and how it’s being marketed in a way that’s intended to rob people of wholesome interpersonal experiences. Or at least dilute them by horning in.
Nothing is safe from tech bros. Certainly not hobbies.
So, first they create phones that make it easy to ignore other people. Then they create machines to give you the ‘interpersonal experience’
fyi, that URL can be trimmed. the ?si=asdkjlfhasldkjfhaslkdjf is just tracking metrics. https://youtu.be/IZ4HOCld5nY works just fine.
I LOVED books as a kid. I was reading at a high school level by the time I started kindergarten, and I just absorbed every book I could get my hands on. I would bring a 100-200 page book to school every day and would finish it before I got home in the afternoon.
I also enjoyed writing and would write my own stories. I was part of an organization in elementary school called Young Authors that encouraged kids to write, and I wrote 3 books through that group. It was my dream to be an author one day.
Then the Internet became a thing.
Suddenly, I didn’t need to spend hours in a library reading through dozens of books to find information I needed. I could just do a quick search on Infoseek, or Excite, or AskJeeves, and have a repository of knowledge at my fingertips. It was life-changing!
As the Internet evolved and more data got dumped on it, I started spending more time perusing its depths and less time reading physical books. I ended up getting a job in IT because computers fascinated me so much. Eventually, I realized I hadn’t picked up a book in years. Everything I wanted to read, I could find online.
Now here I am at 40 years old and my dream of being an author is gone. In our modern age, most people don’t read physical books anymore and authors don’t make enough to survive, unless they make it on a best-seller list or something. Even Stephen King is more well known today for his political commentary on Twitter/X. I haven’t heard much about any books he’s been writing in a long time.
I once wanted a library room in my dream home. I still kind of do, for the aesthetic. But I don’t really read physical books anymore, and I could only fill maybe a single wall with the books I currently own; mostly treasured classics from my childhood that have been stored away in boxes for years. I’d be better off having a PC gaming/theater room in my dream home, as that’s more where my modern interests lie.
I love the Internet age. It revolutionized my childhood and brought us into a wonderful age of information. But I can’t help but think about how completely different my life would’ve been if it hadn’t been invented. I sometimes wonder if I would’ve been more happy and/or successful in a world without the Internet.
I’m younger, but this basically sums up my experience. I still try and make sure to do some (TTRPG) writing every so often just to keep myself sharp.
I used to go through a saga in a couple days. I once reread all of Harry Potter in 6 days. I struggle to finish audio books that I love nowadays
Check out a book called House of Leaves by Danielewski. You pretty much have to have an actual copy.
Very much same. I was an art kid. I painted and wrote and sang and played music, fast forward 30 years and I’m on a computer for 8ish hours at work, then another 8ish hours at home then sleep, with phone time scattered through out.
I kinda feel this way about streaming music. Something has been lost with all the convenience gained. I like streaming. I’ve heard more electronica and techno and chiptunes that I’d never heard before streaming. I like weird stuff and I get a LOT of it for essentially no cost… But I miss collecting things. Collecting albums and such was more expensive and I got fewer but I miss album art and having a collection of said art.
Smart TVs have ruined gaming. The UI is absolute dogshit, and I can’t even simply switch HDMI inputs without this whole useless setup process EVERY FUCKING TIME
Damn what tv? I have 3 Vizio smart TVs (for which I have never setup the smart features) and switching inputs is as simple as hitting the input button on the remote or the back of the tv.
A Samsung (good lord). If you can believe it, HDMI inputs are treated as app icons, and there’s no input switch button to speak of. They’re APPS only visible if the TV feels like recognising a device.
I should have gotten a Bravia. The screen quality is marginally better here, but Jesus Christ.
I refuse to use a Samsung anything. I had one of their tablets years ago, it is what started driving me to Apple products.
My mom got a Samsung TV and I told her to return it if she expected my help with it.
I forgot a key factor. The Bravia’s optical audio output sucks. I like to use headphones when playing Tetris Effect. I’m telling you, playing Tetris Effect with good headphones on this 65in OLED TV while high is an unmatchable experience. No sound issues here, so that’s great.
Normally I’d say “um akshully terris effect on my index is better” but it honestly was kinda distracting in VR… giant TV with headphones or a realy nice sound system is definitely the best way to go.
I use a computer monitor for my playstation on the rare occasion I switch it on. Very much plug & play.
I’d genuinely prefer to do this, but they don’t make 65in monitors.
Sit closer?
Strains my eyes. Plus, this is a living room–couches, not desks.
Can’t be helped, I suppose.
I have many hobbies, but they’ve all gotten better due to technology. I’ll be curious to see what other people have to say.
It’s not nearly as much fun to collect things. There’s no thrill of the hunt-- if you need a stamp for your collection, just go online and buy it.
Finding old stuff felt more fun as well before eBay. You could have some old forgotten collectible thing in a drawer and think, “oooh, this might be a treasure that’s worth money!” but it’s somehow less fun when you immediately go online and see “oh, I could theoretically make $7 on this if I gave a shit” and just chuck it in the bin.
Phones ruined Burning Man. Their cameras make people tourists, and their onsite social media precludes immediacy.
